Art Imitating Pain

Take Charge of Your Chronic Pain introduces the notion of becoming a creative healer. Taking advantage of the creative resources of the brain is a novel but effective way to process injury, pain and suffering and redirects it toward recovery and better pain control.

Because we all communicate and process in different ways, art therapy can be a useful tool in taking charge of your pain. When we are in pain, most of us struggle with effectively communicating how we feel and what we are going through. Picking up the phone and telling our best friend exactly what is going sounds a lot easier than it really is.

Art Therapy is another way of getting in touch with ourselves and expressing it in a visual way. Deep and hidden emotions can feed into our pain levels, even when we aren’t aware that they exist. Using the creative pathways of our minds allows for bottled up feelings to sneak past our usual defenses so we can deal with them better or potentially release them.

Avoid the temptation of saying “I’m not an artist” and skipping this section of the book. There might be a lot more creative juice in there than you realize!